Landscaping is a very large industry both in the United States as well as abroad. Landscapers are often required to transport materials to and from a landscaping location as well as transport machinery to and from a landscaping location. In order to accomplish these tasks, landscapers often use a variety of vehicles and trailers. Generally landscaping crews will place debris and other material from a landscaping site into a trailer or vehicle bed for subsequent disposal of the material. Traditionally vehicle beds have been designed to dump material out of the rear of the truck or out of either side of the truck. Additionally, landscaping crews may be required to transport materials including, but not limited to, bark chips, landscaping rock, or dirt to a landscaping site. Landscaping crews generally empty materials out of vehicle beds by opening a back door of the vehicle bed and generally tilting the vehicle bed such that the material dumps out through the open rear door of the bed. This can potentially lead to difficulty if the landscaping crew is using the vehicle to tow a trailer. If the crew dumps the material out of the bed while the trailer is attached to the vehicle, the material may dump onto the trailer. Consequently, the crew is required to detach the trailer prior to dumping material out of the bed. When a landscaping crew is required to frequently attach and detach a trailer in order to empty or load a vehicle bed, the crew generally spends time that could be spent accomplishing landscaping tasks detaching and attaching the trailer. Consequently the efficiency and overall profitability of the landscaping crew can be diminished as the landscaping crew is not able to maximize time spent working.
Landscaping crews can also be required to lift objects or dump other materials into the bed of the vehicle. This may require additional workers depending on the size and location of the materials as it may require more time and effort to dump the materials into the vehicle bed. While the task may require additional workers, the task may also require that the workers lift heavy or odd shaped objects above their head to place into the vehicle bed. This can lead to an increased number of injured workers and may lead to an increased number of workers' compensation claims for the injuries. Consequently the overall efficiency of the landscaping crew may be decreased as injured laborers are not able to work as efficiently as uninjured laborers. Some vehicles known in the art have attempted to solve this by providing for a rear lift gate or to let down a side of the bed to allow a worker or a forklift, a front end loader, or similar machine to load materials into the bed of the vehicle.